One more week.
Nothing much happened during finals week except finals. Occasionally somebody mentioned Grad Night, but then the conversation always went back to tests and flunking tests and parents going crazy.
I studied and worried about the end of the spell and looked forward to Grad Night all at the same time. I could concentrate on math and wonder about the solution to my life—my future after graduation. I sent mental petitions to the old lady. See how hard I’m studying? Don’t I deserve to stay popular?
I was nice to Maud. I went to the store for Mom. See? I do good turns for lots of people. Can’t I keep my wish? Please.
In language arts on Wednesday, I told Jared about meeting at Ardis’s to go to Grad Night.
He said, “Okay, but I don’t like Carlos.”
“Me neither.”
There were no classes on Friday, only a few leftover exams. My last test ended at noon. Afterward, I cleaned out my locker. I imagined leaving Jared’s caricature behind to stun and terrify some new sixth grader, but in the end I took it.
The halls were empty. I walked all over the school. I was probably the only kid in world history who didn’t want to graduate.
Ardis had told us to come to her house at four thirty to get ready. The boys were coming at six, and Ardis’s mother was going to give us dinner before we left at seven.
A pile of shoes sat on newspapers outside the door of Ardis’s apartment. I rang the bell, and Ardis and Nina opened the door while I was untying my sneakers.
“Hi. Come on in,” Ardis said.
“Any dust or grime on your body?” Nina said. “The disinfecting room is to your left.”
It was like being in a department-store showroom. I smelled furniture polish, and everything was so clean, it almost sparkled, the way bathrooms do in TV commercials.
BeeBee was waiting for us in Ardis’s bedroom. Ardis lived in it, I guess, but it was not a kid’s room. She slept in a four-poster bed with a canopy. Her desk and dresser were made of reddish wood with shiny brass handles and tapering legs. On the walls were framed oil paintings of landscapes and ocean scenes.
“Someday I’m going to sleep on a normal bed,” Ardis said, “and have furniture that was built after Mesopotamia.” She giggled. “Whenever that was.”
“Can I see your dress?” BeeBee asked me. She was sitting at Ardis’s dressing table, wearing a slip, a towel draped around her shoulders.
I took the dress out of its garment bag.
“Cool,” Nina said. “Points.”
It was something to get a compliment from Nina.
“Where are your dresses?” I asked.
They were hanging in Ardis’s closet. I recognized Ardis’s because she’d told me it was an African print. It only had one strap.
“How does the strap work?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” Ardis said.
“I love that strap,” BeeBee said.
BeeBee’s dress was apricot color, silk, with a vee neck. Nina’s was beige lace over a pale-blue satiny sheath. “A hundred doilies died to make this,” she said, touching the lace.
“Okay, guys,” BeeBee said. “I’m ready for you.”
“BeeBee’s unbelievable,” Ardis told me. “We should have before and after pictures.”
BeeBee put shadows across Nina’s cheeks and rubbed them in. Suddenly Nina had high cheekbones, and her broad face looked exotic, almost beautiful. Then BeeBee combed Nina’s hair all on one side, hiding half of the left side of her face.
“Thanks,” Nina said, staring at herself in the mirror. “I would have killed to look like this, and now I look like this.”
Then it was Ardis’s turn, and BeeBee shook her head. “You don’t need me.”
“My nose.”
“Your nose fits your face.” She brushed blush onto Ardis’s cheeks. “A little mascara and you’re done.”
I was next.
“Your eyes are gorgeous,” BeeBee said, applying eye shadow.
“They’re brown,” I said.
“She knows they’re brown,” Nina said, pulling the sheath part of her dress over her head. “You think a blind person is doing your makeup?”
“Brown’s a good warm color,” BeeBee said. “And half the world wants lashes like yours.”
BeeBee did my hair too. She pulled it tight to the top of my head, and then left the ends flopping. It looked like something out of a magazine, and she showed me how to do it, so I could wear it that way whenever I wanted, which would be always. Putting my hair up didn’t turn me into a swan, but I wasn’t a no-neck owl anymore either. Ardis lent me a wooden comb with inlaid mother-of-pearl, which made my hair look dressy as well as fabulous.
BeeBee didn’t spend half as much time on herself as she spent on us. “Only plastic surgery would work for me.” She put the cover back on her lipstick. “Add a forehead. Add a chin.” She sounded perfectly cheerful.
Ardis saw my expression. “Don’t worry. BeeBee likes the way she looks.”
“If you’re pretty,” BeeBee said, taking her dress off its hanger, “your self-portraits aren’t interesting.”
In an astonishing act of generosity, Maud had let me wear the pearls she got from Grandma for Christmas. I fastened them around my neck, over my old locket.
Nina was struggling with her zipper. “I wanted to lose five pounds for Grad Night, but I gained six.”
“Points off,” I said, feeling daring, “for putting yourself down.” I hadn’t teased any of them before.
“Wilma got you,” BeeBee said. She was the first one dressed. “How do I look?”
“Do you have a necklace?” Ardis asked.
BeeBee looked at herself in Ardis’s huge oval mirror. “It needs something, right?”
“Let me see what I have.” Ardis took a jewelry box out of the top drawer of her bureau.
We all looked. Everything was big and heavy. Big jewelry was right for Ardis, but BeeBee needed something delicate.
“I looked okay when I tried it on at home,” she said. “Some artist I am. I should have noticed.”
My locket might look good. I didn’t need it because of Maud’s pearls. But maybe it was too plain. “You can wear this if you want to.” I fumbled at the clasp. “It’s just an ordinary heart. . . .”
BeeBee fastened the chain around her neck. It worked. It was simple, like her dress.
“That’s it,” Ardis said. “It’s perfect.”
“And if you get lonely for my dog or my mom, you can look inside.”
BeeBee laughed. “Thanks, Wilma. I’m glad you’re—”
The doorbell rang. The sound was muffled by the acres of carpet between the door and Ardis’s bedroom.
“Dad will get it, but we better hurry,” Ardis said. She put on big gold hoop earrings.
I stepped into my dress, zipped up the back and stood in front of the mirror.
I was pretty! I never was before, at least not that I could see. But now I was. Whatever BeeBee had done to my eyes, they were huge, and—I don’t know—appealing. And in this dress—unlike in my Claverford uniform—I had a visible waist and breasts and hips, all of them proportioned about right. I did not look like a beaver tonight.
“I guess I’m done,” Nina said.
“Me too.” Ardis joined me in front of the mirror and held out her arms to Nina and BeeBee. “Come here.”
The doorbell rang again. We crowded next to Ardis and faced ourselves in the mirror. I looked like I belonged in the reflection with the three other girls.
“We’re knockouts,” Nina said.
The doorbell rang again.
“I wish I’d brought my camera,” BeeBee said.
“I have one,” Ardis said.
“You can’t take the picture,” Nina said. “You have to be in it.”
“I’ll get Shanara.”
While we waited, the doorbell rang one more time. The four of them had arrived. BeeBee made a final adjustment to Nina’s hair. “Try not to move your head too much.”
“Yeah, right.”
Shanara was about nine years old. “You need me, so now I’m allowed in here,” she said. “Where’s the camera?”
Ardis gave it to her, and we assembled in front of the mirror again. Shanara stood next to it.
“Smile.”
We already were. She snapped.